Meg Vs Diane + bad broadband connectivity in Shoreditch

In it she said: "Were the Conservatives to get in they would be bored of the word Hackney because I’d be bringing it up so often. I’d be looking endlessly at the Parliamentary end of things, looking at the detail of everything going through, every funding formula, any slight amendment or tweak that could benefit Hackney. Whether or not we could ever change it is another question but we would have to be ever vigilant."

An unscientific survey shows she is doing better than Diane Abbott: 89 mentions of Hackney in a search of Meg's speeches/comments in They Work for You compared to 40 mentions by Diane. That's in the period from the General Election until now. But it's not a scientific result!

"I represent Shoreditch, which has a reputation for being a very connected, tech-focused area of London, yet I am inundated with complaints from businesses and residents about the problems of physical connectivity, the time it takes to make the connection, and particularly about the virtual monopoly of BT Openreach, the charges it makes, and the service it provides to businesses such as Perseverance Works. Will the Minister meet me to discuss this and see what can be done to make sure that we have proper connectivity in Hackney?"

1 comment:

This is fairly pointless tbh. Openreach does not have a monopoly on anything, they are the contracting arm of BT Group. All their work comes from communications providers including BT Retail, Sky etc. They DO NOT have any direct customers, their customers are the communications providers like BT Retail, Sky, Tiscali etc. Openreach must treat every communications provider in an equivalent manner.

The biggest cost of providing services equally to everyone in the country is the network. In some places it's either not financially viable to provide a service or in some cases very difficult to upgrade the existing service due to the age of the existing underground plant or complexities to upgrading or boosting this plant.

This is a much more complex issue than an end user can imagine, you can have super fast broadband at the end of your road but if the copper cable to your property/business is low grade then the service you'll receive will be poor. This is not the direct fault of Openreach. The network is IMMENSE, upgrading all the old parts of it would take forever to achieve.

Be patient, better products & services will come in time.

To my knowledge customers should be able to get their chosen service in a timely fashion from any provider, this is done via Wholesale Line Rental or Wholesale Broadband Rental. (WLR & WBR). So technically you can get super fast broadband through any communications provider, via WBR. If not right now, this should be coming to your area soon when the local cabinet is upgraded in the Next Generation Access Project. (NGA).